The Reporter and the Winnipeg General Strike by Michael Dupuis (text) and Michael Kluckner (illustrations) Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2020 $24.95 / 9781989467282 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Winnipeg 1919: A unique retelling of the historical general strike may reach new and younger audiences We’ve heard many versions of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike story….
Read more 1134 Winnipeg’s historic moment
ESSAY: “The Noise of Time”[1] and the Removal of History? by Robin Fisher * In 1957 a group of anthropologists went ashore at SG̱ang Gwaay, which they knew as Ninstints, the site of a long deserted Haida village on Anthony Island. With ropes, pulleys and crosscut saws they lowered a few of the surviving totem…
Read more 1124 “The Noise of Time” and the Removal of History?
Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation by Hannah Turner Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $32.95 / 9780774863933 Reviewed by Forrest Pass * On the desk of my home office, I keep a relic of museum cataloguing in days gone by: a McBee Keysort manual punch, model 5201-630. Resembling a standard hole punch, this tool…
Read more 1116 Politics on a punch card
I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton by Irene Gammel Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2020 $49.95 / 9780228003915 Reviewed by Robert Amos * Mary Riter Hamilton was a Canadian artist born in Culross, Ontario in 1867. Following a difficult childhood she was married at 21 and widowed at…
Read more 1115 An artist in the wreckage of war
Chiru Sakura — Falling Cherry Blossoms: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey through Racism, Internment and Oppression by Grace Eiko Thomson Halfmoon Bay: Caitlin Press, 2021 $24.95 / 9781773860411Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy * In 1997, for the benefit of her children and grandchildren, 84-year-old Sawae Nishikihama began writing memoirs of her experience as a Japanese…
Read more 1114 Steveston, Powell Street, Minto
Unravelling Canada: a Knitting Odyssey by Sylvia Olsen Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2021 $24.95 / 9781771622868 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * When we moved west in 1962 my in-laws gave us Cowichan sweaters. In those beautiful, emblematic, warm AND water-resistant garments, we felt officially citizens of British Columbia. Over the years, as our children…
Read more 1113 Roll up the wool to win
Cold Case North: The Search for James Brady and Absolom Halkett by Michael Nest with Deanna Reder and Eric Bell Regina: University of Regina Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9780889777491 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Editor’s note: I’m delighted to have heard today (January 3, 2022) that the film and tv rights to Cold Case North:…
Read more 1108 The Lower Foster Lake mystery
ORMSBY REVIEW PRESS: Frederick Paget Norbury, Chapter Two: Push and Pull: Tommy Norbury and Emigration by Brenda Callaghan * Editor’s note: we are pleased to present Chapter 2 of Brenda Callaghan’s hitherto unpublished biography, Frederick Paget Norbury, Remittance Man or Gentleman Immigrant? The Story of an Englishman in Canada. Earlier in 2021 we published the…
Read more 1104 The call of the Kootenay
Outside In: A Political Memoir by Libby Davies Toronto: Between The Lines, 2019 $26.95 / 9781771134453 Reviewed by Alex Netherton * Libby Davies’ Outside In is an extraordinary political memoir that chronicles and reflects upon her life and political career first as an urban activist and then eventually as the Deputy Leader of the NDP…
Read more 1096 A master of urban politics
As if They Were the Enemy: The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians on Saltspring Island by Brian Smallshaw Victoria: University of Victoria, 2020 $24.95 / 9781550586671 (available at UVic bookstore for $24.95 plus shipping costs, or direct from b@pixelmap.ca for $26.00 including postage) Reviewed by Marie Elliott * Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December…
Read more 1095 Iniquity on the Gulf Islands
Gwich’in K’yuu Gwiidandài’ Tthak Ejuk Gòonlih: Our Whole Gwich’in Way of Life Has Changed: Stories from the People of the Land by Leslie McCartney and Gwich’in Tribal Council Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2020 $99.99 / 9781772124828 Reviewed by Daniel Sims * “Publish or perish” is an axiom of professional academics, especially those employed by…
Read more 1086 The voice of Gwich’in Elders
Hearing More Voices: English-Canadian Women in Print and on the Air, 1914-1960 by Peggy Lynn Kelly and Carole Gerson Ottawa: Borealis Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9781896133713 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * As a library school student in the mid 1970s I was told that Anne of Green Gables could not be considered a Canadian classic;…
Read more 1085 A balanced cultural herstory
Paradise Won: The Struggle to Create Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve by Elizabeth May Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2020 (second edition; first published by McClelland & Stewart, 1990) $25.00 / 9781771604581 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Anyone who has visited Haida Gwaii will instantly relate to Elizabeth May’s remembrance of one of the most significant…
Read more 1074 Elizabeth May & Gwaii Haanas
Beverley McLachlin: The Legacy of a Supreme Court Chief Justice by Ian Greene and Peter McCormick Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 2019 $29.95 / 9781459414402 * Truth Be Told: The Story of My Life and My Fight for Equality by Beverley McLachlin Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2020 $24.95 / 9781982104979 Both books reviewed by May…
Read more 1059 Tribute to Beverley McLachlin
Umingmak: Stuart Hodgson and the Birth of the Modern Arctic by Jake Ootes New Westminster: Tidewater Press, 2020 $29.95 / 9781777010102 Reviewed by Dylan Burrows * “Going North” is an expression laden with expectation. Uninvited guests, Canadians trespass upon occupied Indigenous lands; they enact their desires on territory they imagine as uninhabited. In Umingmak: Stuart…
Read more 1055 Hodgson of the Arctic
Toshiko by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2020 (new and revised edition; first published 2015) $19.95 / 9780988110175 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * A graphic novel about the wartime treatment of Japanese Canadians? Well, why not? After all, my earliest reading about the Japanese was in comic strips and the weekend newspapers. Terry and the…
Read more 1049 A wartime internment romance
Taken by the Muse: On the Path to Becoming a Filmmaker by Anne Wheeler Edmonton: Newest Press, 2020 $20.95 / 9781774390016 Reviewed by Lynne Bowen * A train has stopped on a prairie siding. A passenger watches through the window as several children play shinny on a frozen water-filled ditch beside the tracks. It is…
Read more 1046 Featuring Anne Wheeler
A Bounded Land: Reflections on Settler Colonialism in Canada by Cole Harris Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $39.95 / 9780774864411 Reviewed by Barry Gough * Canada is usually described as an unbounded land, limited only by political borders with foreign states and physically by its seas and coasts. Here the distinguished historical geographer, Cole Harris, retired…
Read more 1041 A country of bounded spaces
ORMSBY REVIEW PRESS: Frederick Paget Norbury, Chapter One: The Historical Background: The East Kootenay in the late Nineteenth Century by Brenda Callaghan * Editor’s note: we are pleased to present Chapter 1 of Brenda Callaghan’s hitherto unpublished biography, Frederick Paget Norbury, Remittance Man or Gentleman Immigrant? The Story of an Englishman in Canada, the introduction…
Read more 1040 East Kootenay off-grid, old-style
All Fracked Up! The costs of LNG to British Columbia by Alice de Wolff and Delores Broten (editors) Comox: Watershed Sentinel Books, 2020 $30.00 / 9780995328655 Reviewed by John Gellard * “What are you reading?” asked a highly educated neighbour. “A book about fracking,” “What’s fracking?” “How do you heat your house?” “With natural gas.”…
Read more 1038 Welcome to the sacrifice zone